For six years, eight-year-old Dion Perry lived on a small, isolated island off the state's north-east coast.
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Now an author living in New South Wales, Perry shared the story of those formative childhood years in his latest book, an autobiography titled Island Life.
"It was a period of time where my family and I had moved to Clarke Island, which was in the Furneaux Group off the north-east coast of Tassie," he said.
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"My father took a job as an island manager. His job was to develop land. We were the only permanent residents on the island for the duration of that time. We really didn't know what to expect."
When arriving at the island with scant provisions and possessions, they found their new home to be a shabby farmhouse infested with mice and spiders.
"We were completely unprepared because we were supposed to have six months of a trail in another property in the Midlands, but that got cut down to a week," he said.
Looking back, people described me as a very mature child. I was sort of forced to grow up very quickly.
- Dion Perry
"Looking back, people described me as a very mature child. I was sort of forced to grow up very quickly."
He said while on the island he worked as a farmhand, taking care of domestic livestock like ducks, chickens, and goats, and he and his family learned to live off the bounty of the land and sea.
Perry said for him, the biggest challenge was attending school by correspondence.
"We're talking about the '80s - pre-internet days. We did have a phone, but it was a radiotelephone. The mail would only come in every two to three weeks," he said.
He said the book was at least 10 years in the making
"I got it [the first version] critiqued professionally and the person advised me to basically use that first book as an outline and start again," he said.
"I went from writing a very factual piece to more of a story style, little vignettes spread out across six years."
Island Life will be available at Petrarch's Bookshop, Hobart Bookshop, the Flinders Island Newsagent, and through Ginninderra Press.